I've been down here in sunny Sarasota, Florida for the past two days going over the Real World OO Development class curriculum with Hal Helms. Some of the stuff that Hal has been showing me is quite fascinating; this whole server/client event-driven programming architecture is something that I have never seen before in Javascript - I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I think this is going to be a really mind-blowing week.

Today, I got to see the conference room where we will be holding the class; it's really nice, very professional. It looks like our very own mini CFUNITED session of sorts, complete with snacks and all the canned soda you can drink. I think it's going to be especially nice that the class is held at the hotel so that there is virtually no commute time. Plus, we get free breakfast every morning, courtesy of the hotel.

To kick off the class, this evening we had a little hamburger and hotdog cookout, pool side at the hotel. While not everyone could make it in time, it was nice to put some faces with familiar names. In addition to class attendees, I was also very happy to finally meet Rick Osborne in person, who made the 2 hour drive down here to have dinner with us. That said, if anyone is in the area, please feel free to drop by in the evenings - we're always happy to have smart coders to talk to. Just check in with me ahead of time to make sure that we will be around.

As a special treat, one of Gen's kids (Gen is Hal's wife) came to the cookout and preformed magic tricks. He did a bunch of card tricks and some disappearing tricks. He even did two trick where his arm twisted around in the most disturbing way! I am not sure I am going to be able to sleep after seeing that! Steve, a class attendee and former professional magician, has promised that he won't give away any of the magic secrets. So, it seems that I am going to have to spend the next week getting him to crack!

It's actually really nice down here. I thought it was gonna be super hot and I would be sweating all over the place; but, it's been quite comfortable. I actually wore a sweatshirt some of the time. Beautiful sunshine and plenty coming into the conference room.